The year of 1986 can be seen, for some, as the biggest year in Metal. I don't even need to name drop for legendary bands and their albums to begin flying around inside your head. But I'll bet most of the bands you're thinking of are from the Extreme Metal category. But one band was almost completely at the other end of the spectrum: putting out Melodic, fantasy driven Metal.

Although metal had long since been born, the roots of progressive metal were finally starting to take hold in 1986. I had already been exposed to a lot of rock & roll as a child (Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Pink Floyd, etc), but I hadn't yet really got the full meaning of what progressive metal could be. We had been fully exposed to metal and its offshoots, power metal, thrash, and the beginnings of death metal, but nobody had dared explore the music as much as the boys from Fates Warning. I have to be very careful not to take anything away from their offering a year earlier, The Spectre Within, which in its own right is monumental, but Awaken the Guardian would be a summit of sorts for the band because soon after its release the band would be changed forever.

This album is hard to digest at first, you need to listen to it a couple of time to start to like it but not in loop, otherwise it will become boring.
The sound is good, sometimes it's look like prog Iron Maiden. Guardian is the best track.

You either love or hate Arch's voice. The production is crappy on the album but it is saved by terrific song writing.